


Boxing Day

by Calais_Reno



Series: The Irregulars [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Baker Street, Boxing Day, Boys In Love, Childhood Memories, Christmas, Crossdressing, Don't copy to another site, First Love, Forgiveness, M/M, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:54:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21971689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calais_Reno/pseuds/Calais_Reno
Summary: In Victorian London, a young Sherlock Holmes is the leader of a band of Irregulars whose territory is Baker Street. This story takes place the day after Chapter 3 of The Night Children, “The Violin.”
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: The Irregulars [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1580584
Comments: 14
Kudos: 47





	Boxing Day

Regardless of what tradition dictated, Mrs Hudson was always one to do things her own way. She had given us gifts on Christmas— warm knitted hats and socks, books, and plenty of sweets. We’d brought our usual dinner over to the Stamfords, who had just added a new baby to the family. The day after the feast might have been the perfect day to lay about the flat, napping and playing games, but she had other plans for us.

“It’s Boxing Day,” she said. “Put on your boots and coats. You’ll be making deliveries today.”

The boxes were her way of thanking the residents of Baker Street, both businesses and homes, for their support of her Irregulars. In return for our surveillance of the neighbourhood, which warded off plenty of crime, the people of Baker Street contributed to a fund meant to help support us. She sometimes used it to buy things we needed, but her skills at finding used items for a pittance were legendary, and most of the money sat in the bank, earning a bit of interest, waiting for the day when we would be ready for university, if we were able to gain admittance, or to set us up in businesses of our own.

For weeks, she’d been baking and sewing. She knew what each household liked or needed, and there were tokens for each— confections and small ornaments for their Christmas trees, which had become quite a craze in England.

We’d been conscripted to create gifts as well. Holmes had surprisingly elegant handwriting, and lettered small cards with verses and sentiments of the season, embellished with stars and bees and a few objects which might have been atoms. He had also engineered pasteboard boxes to hold the confections, which the rest of us were directed to decorate.

Sal had learned to crochet, but was not very good at it and cursed continually while she tried to produce the snowflakes Mrs Hudson had asked her to make.

“Snowflakes are supposed to be symmetrical,” Holmes pointed out as we watched her labour at this task one evening.

“Those snowflakes look like the cat got ‘em,” Dicky said.

Wiggins laughed and fell off his chair.

Prof diplomatically added, “If it’s a blizzard, one would assume the individual flakes run into one another and end up a bit mashed, and hence, not symmetrical. Yours are blizzard flakes.”

Dicky scoffed. “She’s only made two, though. Can’t have a blizzard with two flakes.”

Sal ripped out a row of asymmetrical points. “Sod it,” she said. “You try, then.”

She showed him how, and within a few hours, a small blizzard of mashed snowflakes filled the table.

My job at the pawnbroker’s had kept me away from most of these preparations; that morning I was given the task of boxing up each household’s gifts. When all the goodies were in their boxes, with labels attached, we loaded up the wagons and set out, each pair with a list of addresses to visit.

Holmes and I stopped at Barkley’s, then Angelo’s. The restauranteur invited us to stop in for a bit, and gave us mugs of hot, strong coffee, along with small, anise flavoured biscuits covered with confectioner’s sugar.

We visited several other shops, delivering our tokens and receiving their greetings in return. When we were down to our last package, I looked at the label in surprise. “It’s for Mr Kramer,” I said.

“Problem?” asked Holmes.

I was still struggling with the anger I felt towards the pawnbroker. I’d agreed to work for him in order to earn a violin I’d seen in his shop, only to have him sell it a few day before Christmas. It had been my gift to Holmes, and the work to earn it took all my free time for weeks. To be left empty-handed had devastated me.

I huffed, staring down at the box. “He cheated me.”

“In the end, you got a violin for your work.” He smiled. “I should say, _I_ got a violin.”

“Only because Mrs Hudson told Lestrade what he’d done, and Lestrade made him give it to me by threatening to report stolen items in his shop..”

“Judging by the quality of the violin, I would say he paid for his mistake. And probably learned a lesson as well.”

He was right. Mrs Hudson had told me, _Leave vengeance to the Almighty, John. He’s much better at it than we are._ I contented myself with imagining ways that God might smite the pawnbroker.

“All right, but it’s a long walk over to Gray Street,” I pointed out.

“Our bellies are full of hot coffee and biscuits, and our wagon is no longer burdened with boxes. I think we can manage the hike.”

We set off, taking turns pulling the wagon.

“Tell me your best Christmas, Doc,” he said as we pulled the wagon wheels free from the clod of snow they’d gotten stuck on.

“This one,” I said, and meant it. “We never had much when I was little, and my dad was either drinking or breaking into houses or staying in gaol. The worst one was when my mum and sister were sick.”

He hummed thoughtfully. “I remember the Christmas my dad shot himself.”

“Did you see it?”

He shook his head. “It happened out in the woods. They had a closed casket. After the funeral, my brother went to live with Cousin Sherrinford, and Uncle Rudy took me away. That was my worst Christmas.” He gave me a sidelong smile. “I did have a really interesting Christmas once, though. I was posing as a girl.”

“A girl? Really?”

He grinned. “Really.” He was going into his story-teller mode, I could tell, and I no longer minded the cold and the clods of snow and the rattling of the wagon’s wheels. “I’d been living with my uncle for two years when all of his troubles ganged up on him. Before I tell you about that, though, you have to understand about Rudy. The thing was, he liked wearing women’s clothing.”

This rather shocked me. “Why?”

Holmes shrugged. “Some men are like that. Never understood it, myself. What women have to do just to look normal is unbearable. Why a man would want to wear a corset, I can’t imagine.”

“Did he wear rouge?”

“‘Course. All of it— wig, stockings—”

“Did he have bollocks?”

“I said he was a man, didn’t I? ‘Course he had bollocks. And a prick, too.”

“What about diddies?”

“Not real ones. Will you let me tell the story?” He frowned down at me. “At any rate, Uncle Rudy was friends with two other he-shes named Fanny and Stella. They used to stay over sometimes, and they would do their stage act for Rudy and his friends. Half of his friends liked playing dress-up, and the other half liked pretending the he-shes were women. If you’d been invited, you probably would have thought it was just a regular crowd of pretty ladies and fine gentlemen. If you looked close, though, you would have noticed some of the ladies needed a shave.”

“Were they kissing?”

“Some of them were. This was a few weeks before Christmas, and nobody minded me watching the proceedings, so I did. It was a regular fancy ball, with music and dancing. A couple of the men wanted to hold me on their laps and feel my toys, but the he-shes told them that sort of thing wasn’t on. Fanny and Stella took me into one of the bedrooms and painted my face and put a wig on me. They found a dress close to my size and pinned it on me. Then they paraded me around, saying I was their niece. After I’d been introduced, people started asking if I would sing something, so I did.”

“Did they really think you were a girl?”

“I was only eight years old, Doc.” He rubbed his chin, where a few hairs had sprouted. “Didn’t have my beard yet.”

“And you were wearing a dress. What did you sing for them?”

“My mum used to play the piano and sing, and all I could remember was _o cessate di piagarmi, o lasciatemi morir._ ”

I didn’t know that song. “What’s it mean?”

“That’s Eye-tie for _Oh, cease to torment me, let me die._ A very dramatic song, like you’d hear in a love opera where everybody dies in the end. I remembered how my mother used to sing it, so I really put my heart into it. Rudy played the piano.”

“How does it go?”

“Later, Doc. Let me finish the story first. Everybody loved it, so they asked me to sing another. Rudy started playing _se tu m’ami_ (If You Love Me) _,_ and I gave it everything I had. I was just hitting the high note on _ma se pensi che soletto_ when the police came busting in. Uncle Rudy yelled, _The boy! Get the boy out of here!_ Because it’s not good to have a child at a cross-dressing ball.”

“Why not?”

“‘Cause little kids might get mixed up seeing men kissing other men dressed like ladies. It might make them think that’s normal. Anyway, Fanny grabs me and Stella’s holding the door, and out we go, into a cab. Everybody who didn’t make it out the door was arrested, including Uncle Rudy. And the police heard he had a ward, me, which concerned them. But nobody remembered seeing an eight-year-old boy at the party.”

“Where did you go after you got in the cab?”

“Fanny and Stella took me to their house. I lived there for almost a month.”

“Dressed as a girl?”

“Well, I was in hiding. They told me that the police would hand me over to the court, who would assign me a new family. They were afraid that I would end up with bad people, so they kept me. They named me Shirley Vernet and said I was their niece.”

“Did they always dress as women?”

“Not always. As you can imagine, it was a process to get rigged up like that. I didn’t particularly like wearing dresses and being Shirley— girls really get short-changed, you know, havin’ t’wear clothes that don’t let you do anything fun and put up with men slobbering after one thing. I wouldn’t be a girl for all the tea in China. But Fanny and Stella treated me well. On Christmas we learned that they’d dismissed the charges against Uncle Rudy for the party, but they’d found some other shady things he’d been doing with investments, so they kept him in gaol. That’s when they took possession of the house and everything in it. I cried about my violin, and Fanny said they’d get me a new one, but I was done with being a girl, so I sneaked out at night and didn’t go back.”

We had arrived at Mr Kramer’s shop. For a moment I just stood there on the pavement, unwilling to bring him his box. He didn’t deserve Mrs Hudson’s biscuits and the jam she’d made or the pretty things the Irregulars had created.

“Go on,” said Holmes. “I’ll wait.”

I picked up the box and went to the door. The bell rang when I pulled it open. Mr Kramer was at his desk, writing in his ledger. He looked up at me and frowned. “Well?” he said.

“Merry Christmas, sir.” I held up the box. “From the Baker Street Irregulars.”

He frowned, but did not get up from the desk.

I looked around for a place to leave it. “Shall I put it on the counter?”

“Johnny,” he said, setting down his pen. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes, Mr Kramer.”

“I wasn’t trying to cheat you,” he said. “Business isn’t cruel or kind. It just is what it is. Do you understand?”

“Sometimes it is cruel,” I said. “But it might be kinder, if it tried.”

Tucking his fingers into his waistcoat pockets, he nodded. “Maybe we both learned something.”

I set the box on the counter. “Happy Boxing Day, Mr Kramer.”

“Thank you, Johnny.”

I stood at the door watching him for a moment. He was just staring down at his ledger. He did not pick up his pen.

Holmes was waiting for me at the kerb. “Let’s go home.” He gestured towards the wagon. “Do you want a ride?”

“I’m not a baby, Holmes,” I replied. “I don’t need a pram.”

“‘Course you’re not,” he said, smiling. “But you’re a wee, pretty thing nonetheless.”

“Let’s go home, Shirley.” I grinned up at him and took off at a run. I heard him rattling after me with the wagon.

When I reached the park I stopped and waited for him. He was humming as he approached.

“Tell me your best Christmas.” I imagined him at the age of four or five, sitting in a gilded wagon or riding on a rocking horse with a mane of real hair. I thought of cakes and pies and roast turkey and dressing. I pictured him in a little suit of velvet, with his hair in curls around his face.

“My best Christmas,” he said, smiling. “This one.”

As we continued walking back to Baker Street, he began to sing. _Caro mio ben, credimi almen, senza di te languisce il cor!*_

**Author's Note:**

> Fanny and Stella were famous Victorian cross-dressers (Thomas Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park) who were tried and acquitted in 1871 for 'conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence.' They would be too young for the chronology of this story, but I borrowed them nonetheless.
> 
> Victorian boys often wore dresses until they were “breeched” at somewhere between two and three years of age.
> 
> *Caro mio ben, credimi almen, senza di te languisce il cor  
> Translation: My darling dear, at least believe me, without you my heart languishes.  
> https://lyricstranslate.com/en/caro-mio-ben-my-darling-dear.html  
> Composer: Tommaso Giordani (1783)
> 
> This is a popular aria, the first one I learned to sing.  
> Holmes is secretly telling John (who doesn’t understand Italian) that he loves him.


End file.
